


The Undisputed Snow Queen

by Edwardina



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Gen, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-05
Updated: 2009-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 02:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edwardina/pseuds/Edwardina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lorelai and Rory witness the first snow of the season and get totally tingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Undisputed Snow Queen

"You're crazy," Rory moaned.

"Yeah, well, so's Candy Land, when you think about it, and I was forced to endure that for years," her mother responded.

"No, you weren't. You loved that game. You were Queen Frostine for Halloween for three years running."

"What? You loved Candy Land just as much as me! All those hours we spent clawing our way to the top of that trippy disco road, craving peanut brittle and denouncing Lord Licorice? To this day, we don't eat licorice!"

"I eat licorice at the movies all the time," said Rory cruelly. "So do you."

"Red Vines don't count," Lorelai countered. "Now hustle, little lady, or it's down to the licorice dungeon for you. Bondage never tasted so sweet and syrupy and yet kinda like feet. Hey! Sweet and feet! I made a rhyme. I could do a whole limerick. A Lord Licorice limerick. What rhymes with licorice? Jibberish?"

"Technically no, but I guess you could get away with it."

"Ha! As I get away with so much," gloated Lorelai, and Rory was forced to concede the point, because it _was_ two-something in the morning, and she _was_ in her snow bunny pajamas, and her mother was shoving her out the front door into the freezing cold. Rory gasped as her bare feet hit the icy white wood of the front porch.

"Mommy," she eeped.

"Get on the bench! Hurry!" her mom ordered, and Rory obediently bolted for the porch swing -- which, as it turned out, was even colder than the wood, the cushions like two mushy blocks of ice, practically obliterating the small amount of warmth her skin was harboring. She could hardly sit on it, and winced and writhed, tucking her knees up to her chest. There were sounds of a struggle in the doorway, and after a minute of banging around, she watched as Lorelai managed to shove her way out, arms full of all the worn, loved blankets and quilts they kept stashed around the house.

Rory reached out blindly, thinking only that since they had just come from the house, the blankets might be a little warm, and she was quickly wrapped in one that smelled like the linen closet. Another was packed around her legs, and a third draped around her. It wasn't overkill at all. Rory tugged it up and hid most of her face in it as she watched her mother jump around spastically in her furry slippers and wrap herself up like a crazy burrito in a bright quilt Sookie's aunt had made.

"Move it or lose it," Lorelai demanded.

"What? Feeling in my feet? Too late," Rory said, scooting pathetically out of the spot she'd just managed to warm a little and feeling a shock of chill run up her spine for a second before her mother had launched herself into the seat beside her. They immediately huddled together, combining forces and body heat, and Lorelai tugged two more blankets atop them, until they were hunched and squinting out into the night from beneath the same one like two soldiers in a dug-out.

"It'll all be worth it soon, baby, I promise," her mom said, though it sounded like a plea to the night.

"Wait, why are we suffering again?" Rory asked.

Lorelai leaned in close, smooched Rory's cheek, and whispered confidentially, "I saw a snowflake."

The front yard, though, was just dark, and to Rory's eyes, kind of desolate without Babette's kitchen light shining onto it.

"Really? Are you sure? You've had the snow tinglies for two days now. As of four hours ago, even you thought your Spidey-sense was off."

"I know. But I'm telling you, I saw a snowflake. It was out of the corner of my eye, so at first I thought, huh, it's Kirk on our roof in the middle of the night again. So I went to the window to ask him if he could get that tube of Sephora Lip Attitude out of the gutter --"

"Mom! I thought you thought that color made you look like a ridiculous baby stripper. I mean, you tossed it out your window for a reason."

"No, haha, it totally does. No one needs that much shimmer. No one. But I thought hey, I could use it to write threatening messages on the mirrors of my enemies! I could write stuff like 'SLUT'! 'TRAMP'! 'BABY STRIPPER'!"

"Michel doesn't deserve that."

"Uh, yes he does. Why do you think I'm still awake? He calls in sick, I spend all day doing two jobs for the price of one and wind up working late so I can sign everyone's paychecks on time..."

"So this is all Michel's fault," Rory concluded sadly.

"A little dry air and the man gets a nosebleed and thinks he's got cancer."

"Through no fault of your own."

"Eeeex-actly," said Lorelai. "Point is..." Her voice went soft and happy. "Snow, Rory! It's happening."

"Right now?"

"Right now," Lorelai replied, and cuddled in closer, which left Rory feeling asymmetrical until she did the same, and it felt nice, her mother's warmth soaking through the blankets to touch her skin. It was too stupid and difficult to harbor any resentment toward her, especially when her voice took on that enchanted, romantic storytelling lilt like it was. "Somewhere up above us are big, thick whipped cream clouds just billowing with millions of tiny, sparkly, perfect snowflakes. A rogue escaped and I caught it with my highly trained eagle eye. All those snowflakes are on their way down any second now, just for us. It'll be like our own miniature snowglobe."

"It does smell like snow," Rory said, getting caught up in the visual of their house surrounded by a flurry of glitter.

"It does. I just wanna take a big bite out of the air."

"Low-cal."

"Low-calorie and delicious. The impossible made possible."

Rory broke a smile and let her head fall to her mother's shoulder, and felt her respond by sneaking a hand through the quilts they were tangled in to push up the sleeve of Rory's snow bunny pajamas and rub at her arm with kind, familiar fingers.

"Snow makes you crazy," she said fondly.

Her mother readily agreed, and sounded totally contented by the fact. "It does. I feel totally crazy... yet perfectly calm. That's the magic of snow."

Rory was feeling much friendlier now, though, well and truly awake, alive in the cold but protected in the warm sanctuary of the blankets and the way her mother wanted her there with her on the porch to see the first snow of the winter. "I know what you mean. I get like that when I start a new book. Chapter One. Everything's starting. The world is brand new. My brain goes into a tizzy because I just can't wait to read more and more and I know I have the whole book ahead of me and I can't wait, but it's the happiest feeling, and I never want it to stop, either."

"Huh. And you say I'm crazy," Lorelai teased.

"I do," said Rory. "But I like it."

At that, Lorelai gasped, and it took another second for Rory to see it, but she did: crazy, nonsensical, excited snowflakes caught on a whirling current of air, fighting against the black velvet sky as they dropped down to the ground.

"I told you I saw snow," said her mom, grinning ear-to-ear.

"Tinglies!" Rory whispered.

"Total tinglies," Lorelai whispered back, and rubbed Rory's goosebump-riddled arm.

"I love snow," said Rory, because she felt like a total kid again, like she believed in magic and respected the ancient monarchy of Candy Land, and Christmas, too, was on the wind, close enough to smell, and it would be full of the same manic excitement her mother was. It didn't matter that in another twelve hours the snow would be caked and dirty under the bus from Hartford and would splatter her school socks and freeze her feet. Right then, she just had massive tinglies.

"Me too."

"I love Candy Land."

"I know. Who wouldn't?"

"Heathens!"

"We cast them out for not bowing to their one true queen. They're doomed to wander the gumdrop forest with that little green dumpy troll thing. What's his name? Is it Dumpy?"

"Lumpy?" guessed Rory.

"Frumpy?"

"Stumpy?"

"Clumpy? Wow, this is a better game than Candy Land," Lorelai commented. 

"This is going to bother me," said Rory.

"Don't think about it. Focus on the snow!"

They did. It was coming down everywhere by then, and Rory started to crave French toast at Luke's when she thought it looked like powdered sugar, the fall became so heavy. When the yard was lightly frosted all over, Babette's kitchen light flipped on, making the snow in front of it glisten. The back door opened, and Babette came limping out in her pink leopard print robe. Neither Rory or Lorelai called out to her; the silence between them had become too comfortable to break. They watched her check on all her gnomes like she was worried the snow would disturb them, then she caught sight of them and tried to both whisper and yell at them at the same time, gesticulating wildly.

"Hey! Lorelai! Rory! It's snowing!"

"We see, Babette," Lorelai called back.

"First snow of the year! Morey says it's gonna come down all night long, and he's never wrong about these things. Weather changes and his neck swells up like a pufferfish. There ain't nothin' he can do about it."

"Morey Schmorey. I saw it coming two days ago!" Rory heard her mother whisper.

Babette was still going. "I don't know if my daylilies will survive the blitzkrieg. Just sayin' goodbye to 'em, you know? I hate for them to be alone when they go."

"Oh, well, Rory and I will watch over them," said Lorelai, and Rory felt her eyelids dip heavy at the mere insinuation that she would be keeping them open all night long staring at Babette's flowers.

"You two are dolls. Just dolls. You got socks on?"

"Yes, we've got socks on," said her mother, lying right through her teeth and making Rory smile into her shoulder.

"Good. Don't want you girls to get frostbite. Your toes'll fall off just like flower petals."

"Creepy!" Rory breathed into her mother's ear with a shiver.

"It would be so sad if you had such a horrible deformity. Beautiful faces but no toes!"

"Our toes are just fine! Full of life and warmth. Wiggling like nobody's business."

"Good, sugar. Glad to hear it. Good night, dollface. Good night, Rory, sweetheart."

"Good night, Babette!"

"I don't wanna be toeless," Rory whined sleepily, once Babette had trudged back inside and left them alone with the precious snow.

Lorelai fluffed her blanket bracingly and gave her arm a good warming rubdown. "But then people could call you Toeless Rory. You know, like Shoeless Joe?"

"Would you write that on my mirror in shimmery pink lipstick?"

"Maybe," said her mother.

"I'll pass."

"Aha, too late. You're stuck with it for life. Toeless Rory!"

"Cruel mother," lamented Rory.

"Hey, I wrote the t-shirt on cruel mothers. Maybe losing your toes'll toughen you up a little and give you some much-needed perspective and life experience. I hear no one at Harvard has any toes."

"Oh!" Rory said, sitting up as it came to her. "Plumpy!"

"You'd prefer 'Plumpy' to 'Toeless'?"

"No, Plumpy the Candy Land character. That was his name."

"Oh, yeah! I knew it was something cruel mothers everywhere would approve of. I probably blocked it out for that very reason. Hey, do you feel better now that you remembered?"

"I do, in fact," said Rory, and smiled as she settled her cheek back down onto her warm spot on her mother's shoulder.

"Me too," Lorelai agreed, but Rory knew better. Her mother was just plain happy, and it wasn't because of Plumpy or silly nicknames and the opportunity to abuse them. It was the snow. Her arm was given a contented stroke, then, and the part of her hair an indulgent kiss, and maybe it was the snow making her mother happy, Rory thought, but maybe it was a little bit her, too.

"So is it going to come down all night?" she asked.

"It's just getting started," Lorelai said.

"Aha, so Morey's neck is right!"

"Yes, Morey's neck happens to be on the right track, but I'm the authority on snow around here, and I've been telling you it's coming since Tuesday. And look how right I was!"

"I never doubted you."

"Really? Not even when you were all like, 'Are you sure, Spider-woman? I think you're bluffing. I see no snow. Therefore, you are a hack! You'll never work in this town again!'"

"Not even then," said Rory loyally.

"Aw! Sweet," said Lorelai.


End file.
